Exploring Quantum Mechanics: "Shut Up and Calculate"

[thenewmans]

I see a lot of statements here which appear (best I can tell) to be based on one interpretation or another of QM. I’m surprised how often a wave function collapse is mentioned like something real. So please tell me what interpretation you like and why.

I’m only starting to learn a little QM and personally, I prefer the “shut up and calculate” direction. I don’t know what interpretation that fits but I think QM is just a great way to predict experiment results and it says nothing about reality. All the rest sounds more like speculation to me.

 

[Maaneli]

I see a lot of statements here which appear (best I can tell) to be based on one interpretation or another of QM. I’m surprised how often a wave function collapse is mentioned like something real. So please tell me what interpretation you like and why.

I’m only starting to learn a little QM and personally, I prefer the “shut up and calculate” direction. I don’t know what interpretation that fits but I think QM is just a great way to predict experiment results and it says nothing about reality. All the rest sounds more like speculation to me.

:uhh: Don't you think it would be infinitely more rational to suspend judgement on the interpretation of QM until you learn more about the various interpretations?

 

[jms5631]

I don’t know what interpretation that fits but I think QM is just a great way to predict experiment results and it says nothing about reality. All the rest sounds more like speculation to me.

While I'm sympathetic towards this attitude, if you believe that QM is a fundamental description of nature, then it doesn't make sense to say that it says nothing about reality. If, however, you believe that it may very well be an approximation to a more fundamental theory, like 'T hooft and Smolin, then this philosophy is entirely appropriate. Personally, I'm careful not to disregard this possibility, and thus I'm somewhat guarded about interpretations. If I had to choose, I think Zurek's decoherence approach is very promising, though in need of further development. I'm also following Valentini's work on Bohmian mechanics, and hold out hope for a hidden variables approach such as this. So in direct response to your question, Bohm and Zurek's approach are the two interpretation that intuitively intrigue me most.

 

[Demystifier]

I will just say that I am a Bohmian. Some reasons for this preference are explained in a casual manner in my blog.

 

[Coldcall]

I see a lot of statements here which appear (best I can tell) to be based on one interpretation or another of QM. I’m surprised how often a wave function collapse is mentioned like something real. So please tell me what interpretation you like and why.

I’m only starting to learn a little QM and personally, I prefer the “shut up and calculate” direction. I don’t know what interpretation that fits but I think QM is just a great way to predict experiment results and it says nothing about reality. All the rest sounds more like speculation to me.

First thing to remember about QM interpretations is that they are more about philosophical preferences than the science itself. If you like the "shut up and calculate" line of thinking; then you are clearly not interested in the philosophical implications of QM.

But you are incorrect about your statement that QM tells us nothing about reality. It very much does, and this is why there are a plethora of interpretations. Each offers a slightly different view of how QM actually effects our physical reality.

And frankly, if you have not understood why QM is a paradigm shift from classical/Newtonian thinking then you have not understood QM

 

[humanino]

If you like the "shut up and calculate" line of thinking; then you are clearly not interested in the philosophical implications of QM.

This is not a fair statement. I like to "shut up and calculate" all day long, and I don't argue with other scientists whether their philosophical preferences suit my own. It still does not prevent me to read about philosophical considerations as an amateur at night. What's wrong with that ?

QM interpretations are interesting but secondary with respect to being able to calculate, especially if you are just starting QM.

 

[vanesch]

QM interpretations are interesting but secondary with respect to being able to calculate, especially if you are just starting QM.

I'll second that. To the OP: by all means, keep your shut up and calculate attitude for learning QM! However, you might find out after a few years, that there are "bizarre" aspects to quantum theory, especially in the usual way of dealing with it, which don't just defy "common sense" (that wouldn't be a problem in itself), but which seem to be totally illogical. One stumbles on them when analyzing certain (gedanken) experiments: should I project ? Should I keep a wavefunction ? For instance, in quantum chemistry there is a priori a difficulty with chiral molecules: the ground state of these molecules is not a chiral state, but a superposition of the two chiral states. Indeed, a priori, the left-handed molecule is in a certain state, the right-handed molecule is in another state which is obtained by applying the parity operator to the state, which commutes with the (electromagnetic) hamiltonian. So or these two states are both degenerate ground states, or they are not energy eigenstates. It turns out that they are not energy eigenstates, but that their sum and difference is, one of which is the ground state, and one of which is a slightly excited state.
So normally, one shouldn't have to be able to find molecules in a chiral state, but rather in their non-chiral superposition, which is the ground state.
In fact, for small molecules, that is exactly what happens: the ammonia molecule (which isn't chiral, but which has a certain spatial orientation) doesn't occur in a specific "geometric" state, but rather in the ground state which is a superposition of two mirror geometrical states. One can even measure the transition to the first excited state which is the same superposition but with different sign: the ammonia maser is based upon that transition.
But bigger molecules appear in chiral states, and not in energy eigenstates. How come ?
Decoherence has an answer to that, but in order to even appreciate decoherence, one has to come awfully close to thinking exactly about what is this quantum-classical transition.

I would like to mention to the OP also another "use" of interpretation issues. It is in fact my favorite way of thinking about interpretations. I've filled up a good chunk of the quantum physics forum discussing about that until I decided that I had said what I had to say at least a dozen times and so I stopped doing that.
My preferred interpretation is the many worlds (class of) interpretations, but probably not for the reasons you imagine. In fact, I prefer that interpretation simply because it gives me a mental picture of the quantum mechanical machinery which is close to the actual mathematical formalism. I will bluntly agree that it is an extremely weird view, and that it stretches philosophical positions to the extreme. That's why many people can't accept it. But I don't see this interpretation as a "picture of reality", I rather see it as a mental aid to "visualize" the formal machinery of quantum mechanics. Probably a bit like, say, a computer scientist imagines his/her objects "talking" to each other and "being there", although for sure he/she doesn't think it is a good representation of the reality of the physical processes inside of his/her computer, but it helps him/her to think about the program and get a "feeling" for what "is going on". In the same way, a many worlds interpretation helps me to get a "feeling for the machinery of quantum theory". It is something that is much more "picturesque" than the quantum-classical transition in more traditional views.
Another quantum "interpretation" that is also satisfying in that way is Bohmian mechanics ; however, that view clashes with the "picture" behind relativity, which is why I don't prefer it.

 

[Coldcall]

This is not a fair statement. I like to "shut up and calculate" all day long, and I don't argue with other scientists whether their philosophical preferences suit my own. It still does not prevent me to read about philosophical considerations as an amateur at night. What's wrong with that ?

QM interpretations are interesting but secondary with respect to being able to calculate, especially if you are just starting QM.

Nothing wrong with that. But for me "shut up and calculate" comes across as a way to prevent discussion on the philosophical implications of QM.

Yes interpretations are secondary if all one wants to do is solve a QM problem; however they are primary if one wants to understand what QM tells us about the nature of reality.

 

[humanino]

they are primary if one wants to understand what QM tells us about the nature of reality.

If you are unable to do the calculations, you will not be able to appreciate what QM can tell you about the "Nature of reality".

 

[Coldcall]

If you are unable to do the calculations, you will not be able to appreciate what QM can tell you about the "Nature of reality".

I can't agree with that in the slightest. The calculations are for practical work and are completely unnecessary in order to understand what QM is telling us about the nature of reality from a philosophical perspective.

Popular science achieves that very goal by educating a wider audience. If you insist that everyone learn qm maths in order to understand what its telling us about the unvierse then most of the world will remain forever ignorant.

 

[maze]

I'm not an expert in the field, but I was under the impression that current thinking in quantum decoherence was that wavefunction collapse never actually happens - it just happens that, statistically, when a particle becomes entangled with enough other particles, it will act as if the wavefunction collapsed.

 

[humanino]

I can't agree with that in the slightest. The calculations are for practical work and are completely unnecessary in order to understand what QM is telling us about the nature of reality from a philosophical perspective.

Popular science achieves that very goal by educating a wider audience. If you insist that everyone learn qm maths in order to understand what its telling us about the unvierse then most of the world will remain forever ignorant.

I do care a lot about communicating science too, and understand your point. If someone has no intention to dive into the formalism, they can still read and try to build their own "QM cultural understanding". However, they would only be able to have a second hand opinion, at most reach an "interactional expertise" in the sense presented in [thread=241388]this discussion[/thread]. There is nothing really wrong with that. However, the OP does intend to master the formalism. Once he has done that, he will be able to read more advanced books, such as the ones by Omnes and d'Espagnat, where he will fully appreciate all the technical details. Why bother and loose time reading approximate statements before being able to read the real discussions ? It is merely a matter of efficiency at this point.

That being said, my previous post goes even beyond in making a strong claim. If there was a consensus about what QM has told us about reality, then maybe a book explaining fully what we have learned philosophically in layman terms would be available. But it is not the case right now. Let me take an example : I do not think I can have a decent discussion about EPR in Penrose's twistor approach without any technical formalism. I tried it with engineer friends of mine, who have quite a decent scientific background and a true interest in QM. Maybe this was only my own failure. However, you must admit that using "Nature of reality", it does not seem innapropriate to raise Penrose's book IMHO, he rightly introduced a decent amount of mathematical background before discussing those matters.

 

[Coldcall]

humanino,

"If there was a consensus about what QM has told us about reality, then maybe a book explaining fully what we have learned philosophically in layman terms would be available. But it is not the case right now."

Yes there is no consensus at the moment and considering most interpretations are not falsifiable I doubt there will be one for quite a while. However all the current batch of interpretations have been released to the public in one form or another. I don't think we need to wait for the consensus interpretation to emerge in order to discuss the various possibilties.

Of course those are philosophical discussions and not ones really which have any relevance on the mathematical language used to describe, measure and manipulate matter and energy at its most reductive scale.

 

[vanesch]

I can't agree with that in the slightest. The calculations are for practical work and are completely unnecessary in order to understand what QM is telling us about the nature of reality from a philosophical perspective.

Although there is of course a big part of technicalities which are indeed not necessary to know for a philosophical debate on QM, I do think that a fair deal of mathematics must be mastered. Of course, you don't need to know how to solve certain differential equations with special functions. But you do need to know a lot about Hilbert spaces, linear operators and all that. For instance, in order to even understand the basic difficulty of the measurement problem (namely, that a unitary time evolution operator can never "project out" a single state from a superposition, no matter how complicated it gets, and hence that there is no hope that "complicated quantum dynamics" is equivalent to a measurement projection) one needs to be comfortable with these notions. Otherwise one misses the issue totally.

Popular science achieves that very goal by educating a wider audience. If you insist that everyone learn qm maths in order to understand what its telling us about the unvierse then most of the world will remain forever ignorant.

Uh, most of the world IS forever ignorant.

 

[vanesch]

If there was a consensus about what QM has told us about reality, then maybe a book explaining fully what we have learned philosophically in layman terms would be available. But it is not the case right now. Let me take an example : I do not think I can have a decent discussion about EPR in Penrose's twistor approach without any technical formalism. I tried it with engineer friends of mine, who have quite a decent scientific background and a true interest in QM. Maybe this was only my own failure. However, you must admit that using "Nature of reality", it does not seem innapropriate to raise Penrose's book IMHO, he rightly introduced a decent amount of mathematical background before discussing those matters.

First of all, such a book isn't there yet simply because I didn't have time yet to finish writing it :rofl:

That said, I'm also fond of Penrose's book, but I think it is an illusion: you can only read it, I think, if you already know quite a lot about the material he presents. Not that he presents it badly, on the contrary. But I don't think that Joe Average has the necessary mathematical "maturity" to understand and appreciate what Penrose writes down. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[QMecca]

What I've learned is that which interpretation you chose is almost like a religion, whatever your teacher/mentor taught you.
If selflearned/selfthinking: whatever the **** is appealing to you.

SCI FI lovers go for MWI usually.
Realists tend to go with Bohmian interpretation.
Positivists go with CI
People who just don't care about philosophy go with STFU n calculate.


as a realist I go with Bohmian.

 

[jms5631]

SCI FI lovers go for MWI usually.
Realists tend to go with Bohmian interpretation.
Positivists go with CI
People who just don't care about philosophy go with STFU n calculate.

I think this is an unfair assessment of the situation. Though it is not my interpretation of choice, to say only SCI FI lovers are the only MWI(or related interpretations such as consistent histories) advocates is disingenuous. It is a direct interpretation arising from the language of the quantum formalism, without adding additional postualtes such as wavefunction collapse. Postivists are not the only CI adherants, and it appeals to those who do not want to make metaphysical judgements of the nature of reality beyond what they can measure. I think this is a very superficial way of looking at interpretations, and you should be careful not to underestimate their value in potentially guiding scientific progress.

 

[maze]

(namely, that a unitary time evolution operator can never "project out" a single state from a superposition, no matter how complicated it gets, and hence that there is no hope that "complicated quantum dynamics" is equivalent to a measurement projection)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you could simply make sure amplitude squares add classically in a large entangled ensemble, and that would produce the same macroscopic measurable effects as "wavefunction collapse", except there never is any projection and the states remain superposed.

 

[Coldcall]

Vanesch,

Actually my suggested reading for any layman who wants to understand the "measurement problem" and the philosophical implications is "Quantum Enigma" by Kuttner & Rosenblum. Previously i had read maybe 20-30 popular qm titles but i don't think any of them explained the observer paradox quite as well.

Kuttner & Rosenblum: "Many years ago, when Rosenblum was a graduate student, he and a fellow student got to spend an evening with Albert Einstein, who tried to discuss the enigma of quantum mechanics with them. But they were ill-prepared.

"Our advanced courses in quantum mechanics taught us how to calculate, but avoided the mystery. Our ignorance of it disappointed Einstein," Rosenblum said.

 

[Coldcall]

I also agree with jms5631 that if we downplay the value of the correct interpretation - whatever that might be - we may fail at extending our knowledge of how qm can be harnessed further.

 

[Fra]

I also agree with jms5631 that if we downplay the value of the correct interpretation - whatever that might be - we may fail at extending our knowledge of how qm can be harnessed further.

Yes, this is my motivation for this discussion too.

My "interpretation" reflects my view of how I think my current understanding could best be brought further. When I first took QM classes, during that time I found the CI interpretation to be the minimal and most comfortable one. Also in the middle of a course, when you are busy learning a tool, it is not the best time to question it.

My deeper questioning of the QM formalism has come afterwards, where time for reflection is in place. I think the QM formalism itself will be modified, and that we will understand the current one as an effective formalism in special cases.

I adhere to some minor subjective self-organising information theoretic interpretation, where the basic drive is self-preservation, and interactions may appear as a result of negotiating inconsistencis due to the subjective views. This view goes back to the foundations and philosophy of inductive logic and probability theory.

To me the foundational issues of QM, goes hand in hand with the missing link to gravity. Clearly stability, inertia and mass and the flow of time seems related. And maybe we still have a long way to a reasonable understanding.

But that has no impact on the effectiveness of current theory, from an engineering perspective. They do not contradict.

/Fredrik

 

[Coldcall]

Fra,

"I adhere to some minor subjective self-organising information theoretic interpretation, where the basic drive is self-preservation, and interactions may appear as a result of negotiating inconsistencis due to the subjective views. This view goes back to the foundations and philosophy of inductive logic and probability theory."

Thats very interesting. Would love to hear more about the "self-preservation" aspect you mention. I also have been wondering whether there can be a correlation between Darwinism and quantum mechanics. I've been trying to build a model of Darwinism which incorporates biological observership as an evolutionary driver for "better" observers. By "better" i mean better sensory development in order to observe more and more detail and defintion in the universe. What did the universe look like when the first primitive microbe self-evolved? It must have looked/felt very different to that microbe.

Just to clarify; I am not challenging evolution theory - i just think its missing some major factor. It may have nothing to do with qm but i suspect it does because of what we have learned about qm's observer paradox. If biology are the only capable observers then i think from a logical perspective evolution and qm may be linked.

Your idea about "negotiating inconsistencis due to the subjective views" is also very interesting. It makes a lot of sense that if we do have an observer defined reality then there would be a need for such a mechanism as you have descibed. Perhaps qm is some sort of reality normalisation methodology. "Entanglement" is also perhaps a suspect in normalising reality far quicker than our eyes can notice it occurring?

"To me the foundational issues of QM, goes hand in hand with the missing link to gravity. Clearly stability, inertia and mass and the flow of time seems related. And maybe we still have a long way to a reasonable understanding."

Yes i think we many be missing something vital in our understanding of how QM and GR relate to each other. My personal hunch is that QM is far more fundamental than GR, and gravity, mass, time are by-products or emergent properties of QM. But of course this is why the correct qm interpretation is so important for future advances. If we are using an erroenous interpretation it may cause us to miss the link.

 

[Coldcall]

Slightly related to evolution and qm:

http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html

Is it not facinating that plants are found to be utilising the efficiency of qm for transferring energy from photosynthesis into chemical energy?

 

[vanesch]

Is it not facinating that plants are found to be utilising the efficiency of qm for transferring energy from photosynthesis into chemical energy?

I don't know if plants are using quantum mechanics (which is a theory or a model of nature). That's a bit like saying that black holes are using general relativity to grow or to attract stuff...
:uhh:

 

[vanesch]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you could simply make sure amplitude squares add classically in a large entangled ensemble, and that would produce the same macroscopic measurable effects as "wavefunction collapse", except there never is any projection and the states remain superposed.

Yes, that's decoherence. If you entangle "enough" with a sufficiently large (read: with enough degrees of freedom) system (the environment), chances that you will ever again have two full terms in the wavefunction "align" (not be perpendicular for at least one degree of freedom) will be essentially zero, for ever. That means that you will never again have any interference, and that you will never again have to add individual amplitudes. If that's the case, each term now lives its life totally independent of any other term, even when we do measurements.

But, as you say, they still all exist in the wavefunction, but now lead their individual lives. This is the basis of the many worlds view: each term now behaves as a classical world all by itself and will never hear again of the others.

 

[Coldcall]

I don't know if plants are using quantum mechanics (which is a theory or a model of nature). That's a bit like saying that black holes are using general relativity to grow or to attract stuff...
:uhh:

Well its a fact that they utilise quantum mechanics for efficiency in the photosynthesis process. If they used a classical process instead then they would not be so efficient. I think what you mean is that there is probably no purpose behind it, and its just an evolutionary trait developed at some point by trial and error. You're probably right.

I don't think the analogy with black holes works. Plants could have evolved differently. Black holes are not biological (as far as we know) and they certainly do not evolve by taking on new characteristics.

 

[vanesch]

Well its a fact that they utilise quantum mechanics for efficiency in the photosynthesis process. If they used a classical process instead then they would not be so efficient. I think what you mean is that there is probably no purpose behind it, and its just an evolutionary trait developed at some point by trial and error. You're probably right.

My point was: you cannot "use quantum mechanics" in nature. You can use processes that are maybe more adequately described by quantum mechanics than by classical mechanics, but these are *models built by humans about nature*. In nature, there are no "classical" and "quantum mechanical" processes: there are just natural processes, and we have different ways of describing them. When you heat water, do you heat it with classical thermodynamics or do you heat it with statistical thermodynamics ? When salt dissolves in water, does it dissolve "quantum mechanically" or "classically" ?

Imagine that a plant would like to use classical photosynthesis. How would it do so ? What does it even mean ?

 

[Coldcall]

My point was: you cannot "use quantum mechanics" in nature. You can use processes that are maybe more adequately described by quantum mechanics than by classical mechanics, but these are *models built by humans about nature*. In nature, there are no "classical" and "quantum mechanical" processes: there are just natural processes, and we have different ways of describing them. When you heat water, do you heat it with classical thermodynamics or do you heat it with statistical thermodynamics ? When salt dissolves in water, does it dissolve "quantum mechanically" or "classically" ?

Imagine that a plant would like to use classical photosynthesis. How would it do so ? What does it even mean ?

The paper mentions; prior to this everyone thought the energy transfer process operated through classical mechanics. That was assumed because of some agitation process they had once identified as the mechanism.

However, I think its way too early to speculate about the distribution of quantum mechanical processes or functions in biology. But, there is a clear efficiency improvement (in material terms) for the plants to be using a quantum mechanism for energy transfer, as opposed to a classical mechanism. That improvement would give it an evolutionary advantage if there was such a thing as a type of plant that could not harness the quantum process for energy transfer.

And if this is such a common process and we should expect it to be pervasive throughout all biology then perhaps the idea that our brains are functioning through a quantum process is not so crazy. Why stop at photosynthesis? We are a couple billion years more advanced.

But whatever the case i think its facinating and needs way more attention.

 

[Fra]

personal interpretations on science and QM

"I adhere to some minor subjective self-organising information theoretic interpretation, where the basic drive is self-preservation, and interactions may appear as a result of negotiating inconsistencis due to the subjective views. This view goes back to the foundations and philosophy of inductive logic and probability theory."

Thats very interesting. Would love to hear more about the "self-preservation" aspect you mention. I also have been wondering whether there can be a correlation between Darwinism and quantum mechanics. I've been trying to build a model of Darwinism which incorporates biological observership as an evolutionary driver for "better" observers. By "better" i mean better sensory development in order to observe more and more detail and defintion in the universe. What did the universe look like when the first primitive microbe self-evolved? It must have looked/felt very different to that microbe.

Hello Coldcall, I'm glad that you connect to my associations. I do not yet have any clear answers to my own questions since I'm in the process of searching, but some comments...

(1) My view on this aims to be more than only an interpretation of QM, I see it more as a constructive abstraction of the scientific method and one idea I've had for a long time is that scientific process and natural processes have a lot in common. For some time some people (ET Jaynes) argued that probability is the "logic of science", thus suggesting that science isn't about deductive reasoning (although this is what many matured theories look like when polished and formalized) but rather about inductive reasoning.

Ariel Caticha is one of those who has expressed in public his idea that the laws of physics at the deeper level might in fact share the structure of inductive reasoning. One of this set out goals is to derive general relativity from principles of inductive logic and reasoning. And that is not simply to associate information geometry and statistical manifolds with those of GR, it aims (I believe) to show that Einsteins Equation itself, follows from some kind of natural inductive logic.

Given that there are variations along these ideas, this is a main spirit I share.

So my ponderings do not only question particular theories, like QM. It questions the context in which they are born (science), and it may suggest new views to the scientific method.

(2) Not to dig too deep into what the observer is but the self-preservation I refer to is with regards to the "observer". But in my thinking, and observer is any system. It doesn't constrain itself to biologal systems. The generalisation is that the system is subject to a selective pressure to develop strategies of self-preservation. Why? A system that doesn't will simply self-desctruct, and such systems aren't stable and thus rarely observed. This is just a very simple way of trying to convey the spirit.

(3) Evolution to me, in this generalised sense have a common structure to that of biology, but goes much deeper. The suggestion of this is that also the nature of law are subject to evolution, but to explain this is more tricky. To try to give a short hint, the basic exploit is that the evolution of law and evolution of observers really go hand in hand. Perhaps one can say that law is the locally emergent optimal strategies, implemented by interacting observers. Zurek said something that I like (without me necessarily agrees with all of his quantum darwinism - I don't)...

"...what the observer knows is inseparable from what the observer is"
-- W.H Zurek, Probabilities from Entanglement, Born's Rule from Envariance
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0405161

In this spirit, I'm working on a sort of representation formalism of information, which can have relations to other such structures. I think of it as microstructures. Such microstructures has general qualities but can also acquire internal structure as the complexity is scaled up. When doing so, actions that was previously highly unfavourable, become favourable. This is where I am at the moment, to try to figure out how this scaling generates the fundamental references, like space and time, and next also "fundamental" interactions. Here gravity takes a natural meaning in that it works in relation to complexity, and ideally it should explain why it fades when complexity is scaled down, and becomes more dominant as the complexity increases. But this is something I'm still trying to figure out.

Evolution and time evolution are treated on equal footing and just refers to different scales, the basic mechanism I picture is the same (self-preservation).

This is more philosophical and abstract than noting that the effiency of certain processes are higher when quantum strategies are used. That's just one thing one would expect to explain better. But there are more interesting suggestive connections.

/Fredrik

 

[Coldcall]

Hi Fra,

Thanks for the intriguing post!

"(1) My view on this aims to be more than only an interpretation of QM, I see it more as a constructive abstraction of the scientific method and one idea I've had for a long time is that scientific process and natural processes have a lot in common..."

This is a very interesting concept. I agree we need an interpretation which is not just a practical type "treatment" of foundation QM, but more importantly, a way to guide future research. Yes i too feel there is a correlation between the scientific process and natural processes. But do you think its a naturalistic mimicking we engage in on a subliminal level or is there really a stronger law of "subjectivity" of which humans are only becoming aware?

"But in my thinking, and observer is any system. It doesn't constrain itself to biologal systems. The generalisation is that the system is subject to a selective pressure to develop strategies of self-preservation. Why? A system that doesn't will simply self-desctruct, and such systems aren't stable and thus rarely observed. This is just a very simple way of trying to convey the spirit."

Have you read any of Henry Stapp's papers or theories? I believe he also feels that in a sense everything is conscious. His papers are all here:
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html

"To try to give a short hint, the basic exploit is that the evolution of law and evolution of observers really go hand in hand. Perhaps one can say that law is the locally emergent optimal strategies, implemented by interacting observers. Zurek said something that I like (without me necessarily agrees with all of his quantum darwinism - I don't)...

"...what the observer knows is inseparable from what the observer is"
-- W.H Zurek, Probabilities from Entanglement, Born's Rule from Envariance
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0405161"[/B][/I]

I'll read that paper cheers :) Yes i like Zurek's ideas and what's interesting is that his work on "decoherence" which he admits is a practical type framework was sort of highjacked by "materialists" claiming it solved the "measurement problem". Intrestingly Zurek is more honest about this aspect of "quantum decoherecne" than many of those who now champion it as the essential interpretation. I was always skeptical of this claim re "decoherence" for a few reasons but considering he studied under Wheeler i thought it was wishful thinking by some to claim this was the big interpretive solution.

I've always been a big fan of Wheeler - a great man, un-afraid of challenging the consensus, and of course he went on to mentor some of the more modern physics thinkers such as Feynmann, Zurek and even Everett.

"...This is more philosophical and abstract than noting that the effiency of certain processes are higher when quantum strategies are used. That's just one thing one would expect to explain better. But there are more interesting suggestive connections."

It interesting because i do believe we are close to where consciousness will have to be considered part of any big solution correlating qm and the natural physical reality of the universe and life itself. Personally i think the key will be a new understanding of "subjectivity" as a an objective process. And abstacts and philosophy will become part of that new science.

The problem we face is a physics community which loathes the idea of subjectivity. Its understandable because scientists are trained to be objective about everything and i think it will be hard for many to traverse the new paradigm.

 

[Fra]

I agree we need an interpretation which is not just a practical type "treatment" of foundation QM, but more importantly, a way to guide future research. Yes i too feel there is a correlation between the scientific process and natural processes. But do you think its a naturalistic mimicking we engage in on a subliminal level or is there really a stronger law of "subjectivity" of which humans are only becoming aware?

For example, since I am human, the human perspective is unavoidably relevant - I can not release myself from that. But apart from that, none of my suggested abstractions is by any means constrained to humans or biological systems. Except for the obvious, that the abstraction itself live in my brain. But that is a universal: every question is relative to the questioner.

As I see it humans are part of nature like other systems. But we are complex and have evolved an impressive level of sophistication.

But like you indicated in the other posts, how does the world look like to a very simple low-complexity system?

So I am somehow trying to ponder what questions any given observer CAN ask. And what view of the world it is likely to have. And how does the observer itself evolve during the question/response processes in a given environment?

In therms of physics this amounts to ask what possible interactions CAN a given system participate in? And how does the system evolve during the interaction process?

But all these questions, are fired from me, who is human. My probably utility of this is that I can try to predict my environment. It's like a game, where each player to find his optimum strategy must also guess the strategy of the other players. But since all other humans, while different, relativity speaking are fairly well synchronized, it is likely that other humans ask similar questions. I would expect that. But I would not expect that a snail will ponder about life at this level. But instead it probably has it's own "questions" (not verbal of course) that applies to it's intrinsic self.

I am more likely to understand a snail, than a snail is likely to understnad me.

Have you read any of Henry Stapp's papers or theories? I believe he also feels that in a sense everything is conscious. His papers are all here:
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html

No I haven't read any of it, but thanks for the link! i'll try to skim some of those papers.

The problem we face is a physics community which loathes the idea of subjectivity. Its understandable because scientists are trained to be objective about everything and i think it will be hard for many to traverse the new paradigm.

This is an interesting point and I think many people have a hard time understanding how subjectivity can make sense and not necessarily trash all logic. Unfortunately universal objectivity is an illusion IMO. Those who think they can do science and not deal with that are from my POV unlikely to have anything todo with the next generation of science. That's my opinion.

Carlo Rovelli has some excellent points to make about the relational nature of things. Relativity or subjectivity doesn't contradict emergent objectivity, as per negotiation processes. I don't agree with his entire reasoning but the early part of hte paper is just excellent IMO.

"Suppose a physical quantity q has value with respect to you, as well as with respect to me. Can we compare these values? Yes we can, by communicating among us. But communication is a physical interaction..."
-- Carol Rovelli, "Relational Quantum Mechanics", http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002

Subjectivity is not near as stupid as some people sometimes seem to think. I think those who reject that lightly and think it means that anything goes at equal probability simply doesn't understand it's beauty. Subjectivity is really nothing but relativity.

/Fredrik

 

[Coldcall]

Fra,

"...I am more likely to understand a snail, than a snail is likely to understand me."

Yes, and perhaps one day we will understand much more of what goes on with snails. Maybe we will even figure out how to communicate with them on some biochemical level.

"This is an interesting point and I think many people have a hard time understanding how subjectivity can make sense and not necessarily trash all logic. Unfortunately universal objectivity is an illusion IMO. Those who think they can do science and not deal with that are from my POV unlikely to have anything todo with the next generation of science. That's my opinion."

Absolutely and this is a major problem in the mindset of modern physics. Its almost as if quantum mechanics never happened because even though phycists accept it they seem to ignore what it tells us about reality. I think this is why we seem to have hit a brick wall in regards to unification theories as described by Lee Smolin in TTWP. Its as if we've been traveling down a long winding road, found the side road for QM, but from that point on we got lost and missed the next turn. My view and i know you don't agree with me on this part, is that instead of accepting the observer paradox and researching how or why observers are essential for a "reality" to occur, we have ignored the problem and tried to deal with it in other ways.

Again i don't know what defines a valid observer exactly but i suspect its any kind of biology.

"Suppose a physical quantity q has value with respect to you, as well as with respect to me. Can we compare these values? Yes we can, by communicating among us. But communication is a physical interaction..."
-- Carol Rovelli, "Relational Quantum Mechanics", http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002"[/B][/I]

Yes very interesting. Thanks.

"Subjectivity is not near as stupid as some people sometimes seem to think. I think those who reject that lightly and think it means that anything goes at equal probability simply doesn't understand it's beauty. Subjectivity is really nothing but relativity."

I think subjectivity is intrinsically linked to our "consciousness". If you think about it we have to be capable of highly subjective thought to even "understand" quantum mechanics, and even then as you've pointed out; many realists or materialists have a real problem with it. Yes the observership angle to Relativity, and the subjective mindset one must enter to understand it correlates far closer to quantum mechanics than first impressions.

In fact life seems pretty subjective (quantum mechanical) even on macroscopic and human social levels. What are confrontations about other than two different versions of reality clashing? Its a subjective duel though the outcome will effect the global reality. Usually the victor gets his way and the world ends up reflecting that outcome. The loser either dies (becomes non-existent) or retreats - meaning he/she has less influence in moulding the future reality. One can apply this subjective model of interractions across all of life as we know it.